Online Degrees and CLEP and DSST Exam Prep Discussion
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Study.com Graders - DeanLewis - 03-16-2019

So I've been completing my UL courses for a TESU BALS at SDC, and as of today have completed Psychology 312: History and Systems of Psychology and Psychology 310: Psychology of Personality. Overall I have enjoyed the course format of SDC, and would recommend it to others. What I wasn't prepared for was how tough the graders are for the written submissions. I haven't managed to break out of the 77%-78% range, and while I've passed both of the classes with final grades in the 80s range, I think it's honestly a little ridiculous. 

The final project for the Psychology 310: Psychology of Personality class was a diagnostic treatment plan, based on a prompt consisting of a very short "case study." I should say that I'm a strong writer, and a board-certified psychotherapist, and very familiar with current literature (and even showed how the prompt was relying on DSM-IV diagnostic criteria, and not the guidelines from the current DSM-5), and STILL scored a 78%. I have never scored so low on a paper, and finished a writing intensive regionally accredited graduate degree with a 4.0 GPA.

Luckily I only needed to "pass" these courses (70%+) as TESU doesn't transcript lettered grades for them, but I feel like I had to share my experience with others engaging these courses, to note that it's imperative to do your absolute best work when submitting the written assignments (especially if you're not a strong test taker). 

Has anyone else experienced SDC graders to be so tough, or have I just won the jackpot? :-)


RE: Study.com Graders - TexasTink - 03-16-2019

I felt like their grading was fair to generous overall. I did find that the papers I put more effort and time into making them pretty good scored generally worse than the papers I didn’t think through as much and just threw together. I don’t think I ever scored lower than an 80 and had a couple in the 90’s. I didn’t do any psychology courses though so maybe those have a different grader. I did the English Comp courses and UL History and Communications courses.


RE: Study.com Graders - zzzz24 - 03-16-2019

I didn't do any psychology courses either, but I found the grading to be fairly easy. I skipped the 2nd assignment altogether for many of the classes after securing a pass after the first assignment/exam.

I recommend organizational communication, it was the shortest UL course on there I think. It was also fairly common sense stuff.


RE: Study.com Graders - Supermind - 03-16-2019

I took Psychology courses, and scored well in my papers. I think SDC graders expect you to stick to the rubric very closely. Your paper should address all the major points outlined in their rubric. If you do not address the rubric, but write a very informative and thoughtful paper, they send a word of appreciation for your effort, but lower the grades. However, based on the reasons they give for their grading, you could always choose to rework on your paper, and submit it again. You are allowed to make three submissions on the same paper. So, you could rework and send it back to them, and see if your grades go up.


RE: Study.com Graders - DeanLewis - 03-16-2019

I thought I was following the rubric pretty closely and generally scored in the "good" category, I was just surprised by the feedback. In any case, I passed my classes just fine. I'm working through Advanced Technical Writing now. Seems pretty straightforward :-)


RE: Study.com Graders - Ideas - 03-16-2019

I felt that I had 1 tough graders, and another that seemed to demand more than the rubric and instructions.


RE: Study.com Graders - kodiak61 - 03-16-2019

I also felt the graders were on the ridiculous side.

I have taken 1/4 or so of my degree at B&M state schools, passed the Capstone at TESU with a 97% overall and wrote to the same degree for my 3 UL SDC classes.

My highest grade on any paper from SDC? 83%!

The other papers were all in the 70's, and I literally wrote these to the rubric, with the same level of energy and concentration I did for the state schools or TESU capstone. Because I too only needed the pass, I didn't argue, but I will say that on 2 of the papers, the critique was out of left field and I seriously think they were talking about another students paper.

Fun times.


RE: Study.com Graders - jsh1138 - 03-16-2019

They're never going to give you an A, has been my experience, but you don't need A's and the courses are credit/no credit so there's no reason to sweat it


RE: Study.com Graders - Merlin - 03-16-2019

As far as I can tell, SDC uses the same pool of graders for all their assignments (at least I got the same grader for different subjects). I get the impression that the graders are not always subject-matter experts (other than perhaps in their grasp of academic writing, grammar, mechanics, formatting, etc.), rather they rely on the rubric to determine how well you do. I assume they also have some kind of grader-specific version of the rubric which probably indicates specific things they are supposed to look for, and you'll be graded down if they are not there (or are hard to locate).

I realized this after the first couple of writing assignments and changed my approach to focus on simple language that only addressed the prompts and the rubric. I tried to avoid going to extra depth (which is a challenge for me since I tend to be overly detailed) and just turned in the minimum required. I usually scored in the 90s, so this approach pays off.

Also keep in mind that if you don't like the grade on a paper or project, you can always change it based on the feedback from your grader and keep resubmitting it until you're happy. Not that it matters since you only need 210/300 total points (70% overall) to pass any course.


RE: Study.com Graders - KawJa - 03-19-2019

Yes! I am an English major and I haven't gotten lower than an A on a paper since probably seventh grade. I took Technical Writing from SDC and got a C! I actually reevaluated my SDC plan from there and chose classes from there on out that didn't require papers.